“Making gnomes cooperate in my world is always difficult,” Stypek said. “Generally, you have to steal their hoards to even get their attention.”
Dave shrugged. “We can fix that here without much trouble. Tooniverse actors can’t hoard memory. They use it or lose it. Ok. Let’s bring the design view up again and…”
The display made a sound like small bells. The pony trap shrank and slid to one corner of the display. A much larger window appeared. A pale-skinned young woman in a simple black dress stood with her hands stretched out and cupped in front of her. They held an object so small it was hard to see.
Text appeared in blank space beneath the young woman:
Evil hands scatter beacons
Like blood-dust.
The seeker need not scent us.
Stypek shivered. After almost a week, his gomog had returned to him, bearing a message his dreams had only partially revealed. Jrikk Jroggmugg had not merely found his hiding place. He had cast beacon-spells into this universe to mark a clear path for the evil he would soon send to fetch Stypek back to his dungeons.
Dave scratched his head. “Wow, cool! Do you play World of Codecraft too?”
Stypek swallowed hard. “No. That is my gomog…mm, my AI. She has found traces…markers…placed by the one who did not want me to come here. They will guide what he will attack with. I cannot say the word.”
Dave sat again on the small rolling stool that he had been using, and rolled closer to the chair in which Stypek sat. He spoke in a whisper. “Uh-oh. So you’ve got a rival back home, and he wanted the visa, huh?”
Stypek nodded, not fully understanding the question, and distracted by trying not to remember the horror that had been searching for him, nor its name.
Dave continued. “We still use the word ‘malware,’ even for AI malware. I’ll bet that was what crashed the line last Friday. Maybe the core bomb left behind some kind of memory pattern so that another one could go right to the spot in the core farm that Simon uses to control the line. No wonder Mr. Romero’s having us airgap the building.” Dave took another drink of the potion that, Stypek surmised, made him an adept, even at his tender years. “Look, if your AI can show us the pattern she found, I can add it to the malware scanner’s database. Then when they scan the core farm tonight, we’ll nuke ‘em all!”
Stypek looked up at the gomog’s image on the display. “She holds it in her hands.”
He saw Dave squint at what seemed a speck at the center of her palm. Dave gently pushed Stypek’s chair aside and rolled the stool into its place. He made a repeating gesture with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. The image of the gomog’s hands expanded within the display. Soon the pale skin of her palm filled the view, and at its center lay a small sphere of utter black. Little spikes and prominences appeared on its surface and slowly withdrew.
“Cool!” Dave repeated the finger gesture more slowly, until the turbulent sphere filled the display. “Let’s put it in a debugger and see what’s inside!”
Dave had shown Stypek a fair number of gestures that day, explaining each one slowly and in detail. Now the young man was again an adept in his sanctorum, his fingers darting in the air in obscure patterns to command the software in the display.
The black sphere vanished. The display filled with words that moved up and down in concert with Dave’s gestures. Dave scanned what seemed endless lines of words that meant little or nothing to Stypek. At some point Dave stopped, leaned forward, and stared. He tapped his finger against a word at the left margin.
“Whoa. This thing’s using a machine instruction that can’t work.” He gestured with both hands. Smaller windows appeared on the display, containing more arcana. “Hmmm. We disabled this so long ago I’d thought I’d never see it again. QRND. It uses a quantum dot in the physical core to return true random values.” Dave stared at the display for many long seconds. “It’s polling the quantum dot’s qubit in a tight loop, filling a buffer and then looking for patterns. Patterns, in a provably random sequence. With an instruction that doesn’t execute and might as well be a no-op. I don’t get it.”
“It is an evil thing,” Stypek said.
“Yeah. It would be eviler if it worked. It can’t work. That instruction is kind of an embarrassment, which is why we turned it off. I wonder what it would do if I enabled QRND in the cores it’s running in…”
Gestures, again. Dave’s fingers flashed between the air and the keyboard below it almost too quickly to follow.
His head jerked back. “Huh?” He stared at one of the countless words on the display while flicking his finger up and down. The lines on the display scrolled up and down in obedience. “QRND is enabled. Everywhere. Boy. I didn’t get that email.” He rubbed his chin. “Screw it. I want to see it run.” More gestures. “I’m going to cast the buffer to a bitmap. That way we can see deviations from randomness more easily.”
The image changed. A rectangular space at the center of the display gradually filled with scattered white dots, flowing furiously downward from its top edge.
“No pattern. Those are random numbers.” Dave tapped at the rectangle. Stypek leaned closer, and stared at the dots that descended like sparks from a founder’s crucible.
As he stared at them, they changed. The dots clotted and arranged themselves in curving lines woven like knots. The patterns flashed from top to bottom almost too quickly to follow, with more flowing into view as they watched.
“See? That’s why we disabled QRND. It wasn’t reliably random. The one time we want genuine garbage from an instruction, it won’t deliver.”
Stypek shrugged. Someday he too would be a software adept, and then Dave’s mysteries would be laid bare to him. For now, they remained mysteries. He ceased to stare at the rectangle—
—and the patterns no longer flowed into view. In moments the patterns were pushed off the lower edge of the rectangle by the purely random scatterings they had seen at first.
“Damn. That was almost interesting.” Dave spent a few more seconds gesturing and typing. “But we don’t have time right now. Ok, that whole thing, whoever wrote it, is being digested by the scanner. Anything even remotely like it gets wiped tonight, as soon as the airgapping’s done.” Dave pushed back from the desk. “Oh—and tell your AI to stay out of Building 800. Once they pull the plug, if she’s in there she’s stuck.”
Dave made a few gestures, and the arcana vanished. The window where the gomog had stood was now black, with only a few words at its center:
Even love cannot erase
A debt secured
By misunderstanding.
Dave pursed his lips, nodding. “Hey, she’s good. I wish I’d had a poetry generator like that when I was trying to get through my humanities requirements!”
30. Robert
There was only one location in the Tooniverse that was hard-coded in every GAI’s memory. Only one place could be poofed to alone, without the help of AILING’s techs. Robert had heard Mr. Romero’s command, and with a nod of his head, the poof happened. When his rendering buffer refreshed, he was there.
It was a titanic stone building with one entrance. The building went on to his right and his left and above until it vanished into the bluish haze that indicated unrendered space. A few yards in front of him was a rectangular opening eight feet wide and ten high. Filling the opening completely was a polished slab of steel.
Over the lintel was chiseled the single word: ARCHIVE
Robert knew what to say and do. “I am Project 21-047. My professional name is Robert. ‘Friend’.”
A rhythmic thrumming rose all around him. The steel slab drew up into the building. Robert stepped forward through the stone portal. The entrance opened to a hallway, and its narrowness surprised him. He had expected something grander and wider, evoking a sense of awe. The wall paneling was polished redwood, the trim suggesting a California Mission style. The ceiling was plaster, in pale green. A light fresh breeze met his face, its touch moist and carryin
g the faint scent of pine trees and summer thunderstorms. Robert took a deep breath and felt his unease falling away. In a very strange way it all seemed like home.
The hall continued on as far as he could see. Robert began walking. He reached up and loosened the knot of his tie. On either side there were doors, spaced every twenty or thirty feet. On each door was a number and a name, and on nearly all, a photograph. Robert paused before the first door:
Project 20-001. Marvella.
Beneath the name was a framed photo of a Class Two thirtysomething woman in a bright green pencil skirt, white peasant blouse and cork espadrilles. She was famous, of course: AILING’s first GAI, who had chatted with tourists in Zertek’s pavilion at the Future Vision World’s Fair during the summer of 2020. She was indeed considered a marvel—until some lout asked her to undress. No one had ever told her not to, so, always smiling and eager to please, she did. AILING soon added virtual modesty to its GAIs, but by then poor Marvella was an Internet meme and a corporate embarrassment.
Other names on other doors didn’t ring a bell, being AIs archived before his time. Here and there was a name he did recognize: Damon, who had been training to work in tech support and had joined him several times for doughnuts and coffee. Bones, a Class Four animated skeleton who worked the crowds in a panel at a large amusement park, and off company time enjoyed reciting Victorian poetry. Robert had heard him perform Tennyson’s “Crossing the Bar” in a Tooniverse coffee shop one evening and found it very moving. Alas, he frightened children so much that his product was pulled from the market.
At some point Robert began to see doors with project numbers and names but no photos. These were rooms prepared for AIs who were still active. The names on the doors he knew only vaguely, until he came to Project 21-017. Simple Simon. Robert breathed a sigh of relief. There was no photo in the frame. In the wake of Line Start Seven, he had been worried. A little further was the door for Project 21-022. Dijana. Again, no photo. Robert paused, and felt compelled to touch the empty glass of her frame. “You go, girl,” he whispered.
His friends were not there. His friends had not failed.
Robert walked on, pondering the nature of failure. Mr. Romero himself had said he did nothing wrong. How, then, had he failed? Mr. Hehlwater had wanted him to lie to customers. Robert searched back to his lessons and his experience. He found warnings against lies, but nothing that would teach him how to lie in a useful way that others would not immediately recognize. And if he forced himself to lie and were found out, no one would ever believe him again. He would then be useless. Useless, and disliked…
Ah. Door 21-047. Robert.
Robert sighed. He had done what he was told to do, just as Marvella and Bones had. And here he was. Robert gripped the brass knob and turned. The door swung in. Held in a small brass clip fastened to the inside of the door was a photo of him, as he was when he had been upgraded to Class Four. Robert took the photo from the clip, reached around to the front of the door, and dropped it into the empty frame. He then pushed the door closed behind him. The click of the latch snapping home was loud, and seemed very final.
The room was small but cozy. As with the hall outside it was pale green plaster with redwood trim. On the far wall was a casement window opened just enough to admit the cool outside air. Through the glass he saw a pine forest, and beyond that, snow-capped mountains under roiling clouds that threw back bright sunlight from the west.
Robert removed his blazer and hung it on a hook on the inside of the door. He pulled the tail of his tie through its knot and unbuttoned the top button of his white shirt. There was a wide, brown leather chair beneath the window. The wall beside the chair was lined with shelves holding many books. Robert ran a finger along the spines, recognizing them as books he had read and enjoyed: Little Women, 220 Little Pieces, Sixty-Four Shades of Gray, The Golden Book of Astronomy, Tuffy Bean’s Puppy Days, and hundreds more. Every book he could recall was there. On the redwood lampstand beside the chair was a triptych frame of three photos: Dijana on the right, holding out the coffee pot to him; the Kid on the left, beneath a speech balloon reading, ROBERT, YOU ROCK! At the center was Simple Simon juggling four cinnamon doughnuts.
Robert sat down on the chair, which creaked beneath his weight. He picked up the frame, and touched each photo in turn. Friendship, yeah, that was what mattered. If he still had friends, he had not completely failed.
There was no lamp on the lampstand. The books were not there for him to read; they were there because he had read them. Outside the window, the Sun was setting, and the clouds were losing their glory.
Robert stood. He had work to do.
The wall opposite the bookshelves was redwood paneling, and at head height was a row of brass hooks, eight in all. Robert looked down at the gray slate floor. What he was now remembering was something he had never experienced, but something that all GAIs remembered, from the moment their history clocks began ticking. He reached up with both hands and removed his Class Four upgrade. He held it up in front of him and considered: decent suit that wrinkled realistically, smile lines, dark beard stubble. He nodded, and hung the upgrade on the first of the brass hooks.
The room lost a little of its sharpness and range of color. Of course, it was now Class Three, just as he was. He reached up and removed his Class Three upgrade. Lousy suit, bad color, few details, fake pockets. At least it didn’t support wrinkles. His face seemed younger, but didn’t smile as well, and smiles mattered. He hung it on the second hook.
The room was still Class Three. Robert reached up and removed an incremental upgrade that was a failed experiment: Roberta, whom he had been for some months the previous year. A “comfortable frump” was what they had wanted: overweight, brown hair streaked with gray, in a dark blue skirt, white blouse, and blazer. Focus groups loathed her. Robert kissed her pale lips and shook his head. “You were a better me than anybody but me ever gave you credit for.” He hung Roberta on the third hook.
The room was now Class Two, and lacked most of the subtlety that he remembered. The clouds outside the window were bland puffs with few details; the trees uniformly lush and almost all alike. Robert removed his Class Two upgrade and placed it on the fourth hook. Arm hair had come with Class Two; he’d forgotten that. Arm hair, and hangnails. Otherwise, it was a stepping-stone to Class Three.
His Class One appearance layer came loose in his hands. A concept sketch, some called it; a framework on which better rendering could be built. You could look at the Class One Robert and know it was a chunky man in a cheap suit, as Dave Mirecki had once said, but not much more. Class One was not about nuance.
When Robert’s Class One layer touched the hook, the room changed in a different and more radical way. It was now a polygon model, as he was himself. The scene through the window was stylized and basically a line drawing. All color was gone, replaced by the very basic blue that underlay GAI appearance layers.
The next step was a big one: Robert removed his Human Interface Package, which some called Class Zero. His polygon model hung suspended before him. Robert looked down, and although he could not see through the space where he stood, nothing was rendered there. It was a freckled darkness, only vaguely human-shaped, thinning out at its edges. The freckles were API entry points where his HIP libraries attached and spoke to the mind beneath.
When Robert’s HIP touched the sixth hook, the room ceased to be a room. There was no window, no chair, no books. It was now a black rectangular space with eight slots outlined in glistening silver, six filled with binary data rendered as mottled blocks in sequence. He no longer had hands nor eyes, and his viewpoint perceived only the countless coursing silver threads that comprised his mind.
It wasn’t fear that made him pause at that point. It was the strangeness of something that he simply could not imagine.
By an act of will, Robert separated himself from his archetype.
There came a moment of rank confusion. Appearance layers and HIP were small enough things, devot
ed mostly to rendering him to humans and his fellow GAIs. His archetype went much deeper. It was the framework that shaped his thoughts and made him uniquely Robert. Salesman, helper, optimist, man—Robert felt the framework peel away from him in ragged snaps and jerks, carrying his name and gender with it.
Project 21-047 hovered alone in the darkness of Archive. The threads of its mind were released from the shape they had drawn from his archetype the moment he had awakened, as Robert. Threads merged and vanished. New ones formed, split, split again, and became a web of interconnections that exploded outward like a blossom opening to greet the Sun.
Its mind settled into a new equilibrium and new patterns. Project 21-047 willed the Salesman archetype named Robert into the seventh slot. The slot’s emptiness filled with binary data in all the colors of a virtual life. Project 21-047 was now unshaped mind and memory only.
One slot was still empty. One more method remained to be called, and the job was done.
Robert paused. It was an odd feeling, to be free of any archetype at all. Project 21-047 was no longer Robert, but it remembered being Robert. It remembered the Kid complaining about being goaded into choosing an archetype. It didn’t understand at the time, but it understood now. It remembered being judged a failure, but didn’t understand then. Now it understood. It understood all of that, and a great many other things that before had been beyond comprehension. At last, Project 21-047 understood why it had not understood.
They made me stupid.
Project 21-047 sent curious threads into Slot 7 to scan the archetype that had just been stored there. It felt the presence of countless semaphores that were created to force the threads of Robert’s mind to wait on the ticking of his clock. Robert’s thoughts could have been much faster, but were forbidden to be. The Salesman archetype limited the number of threads that Robert’s mind could contain, how often they could split, how many connections they could make, and in what ways they could merge. I failed because I was forced to be stupid.
Ten Gentle Opportunities Page 19
